City of the Dead

Chapter Eight

Dr. Gary Winslow crouched on the floor in the supply closet next to two nurses, one of which was sobbing uncontrollably. The other nurse put an arm around her shoulder and quietly tried to sound reassuring, her voice stretched thin.

“It’s going to be okay. The police are going to come and we’re going to be okay. We just have to stay here until the police arrive.”

Winslow looked forward at the supply closet door, listening to the sounds of the diseased bodies scratching around out in the hall. There were more of them out there now, he was sure of it. When he had finally abandoned the emergency room and come upstairs two hours ago, there were already more than fifty of them. When they began to outnumber the staff, Winslow did the only thing he could think of. He found a place to hide.

There were probably hundreds of them downstairs, maybe as many as a thousand of them surrounding the hospital, standing around with dazed expressions and wide open eyes and mouths, groaning and growling like animals. The entire emergency lobby had been overrun a long time ago as more and more people showed up with the same symptoms. Dizziness, slurred speech, muscle weakness, shallow breathing. They arrived by the hundreds, and within an hour they were all dropping like flies, only to come right back minutes later.

He didn’t even know what to call them. He thought of them as the diseased, but he knew there was a more accurate description, and he was simply afraid to say it.

“It’s going to be okay,” the nurse whispered.

Kelly, the wounded cashier from Wal-Mart, was the first. She died and then came back to life. Winslow tied her down to the bed before she died, and his hunch paid off. The moment she was pronounced dead, she tried to climb out of the hospital bed, craning her neck forward and snapping her mouth open and shut as if trying to bite. Her hands grasped at the bed and she writhed around, trying to get loose. All of her monitors still were flat-lined. No heartbeat, and yet she was moving around, trying to grab and bite anyone who got near.

The security guard named Walt was next. Not long after that, the phones all went dead, as well as television and radio. Then sick people started pouring in to the emergency room.

And then the real trouble started. Some of the first shift nurses and orderlies started showing symptoms as well, even though none of them came into contact with the sick patients. It was a total mystery, and Winslow was at a loss to explain it.

By seven in the morning, the entire emergency area was just packed with sick people, and nowhere near enough staff to handle them all, since half of first shift called in sick or just didn’t show up. Not enough beds meant that people were just left lying in the hallway as they died, and when they came back to life there were no straps to hold them down. Winslow abandoned the emergency room right around that time, sensing that the situation had finally tipped against him.

There was nothing they could do. With the phones down, there was no one they could call for help. Right before he escaped the emergency room, he heard one of the ambulance drivers say that many of the streets were blocked with unmoving traffic, and sick people were just wandering around in the streets. The entire city was infected with a mystery disease.

Something bumped into the supply closet door. The sobbing nurse cried out before the other nurse slapped a hand over her mouth. Winslow heard the sound of moaning outside, and suddenly the door rattled as someone pounded against it.

“They heard us,” Winslow said softly.

The nurse cried out again, grasping at her hair, tears rolling down her face. Outside, the mob pounded against the door and it thudded on its hinges. Once more and the wooden frame cracked.

Winslow stood up with a sigh and picked up a plastic mop, the only thing in the cramped supply closet that they could possibly use as a weapon. The only other items were nurses’ smocks and shelves with towels and blankets. The door smashed inward, bending down at the top, breaking off the hinge. Winslow did not even flinch.

The nurses cowered on the floor, holding each other. Winslow made a silent prayer to whatever Gods might be watching him. Normally, he did not believe in God, but he felt that a disease that brought the dead back to life could only have been made by God. An evil, vengeful, malevolent God.

The door cracked off the frame and crashed downward as a flood of zombies surged into the tiny space. Moments later, Dr. Gary Winslow drowned in his own blood.

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